Some Mortgage lenders (Woolwich & Leeds) are starting to use some old tricks that I thought we had seen the back of.

The Woolwich (Barclays) are promoting a stepped product and Leeds are using the old, you must take your home insurance from us to secure the deal.

Are the bad old days returning????????

Taking home insurance with the product doesn't sound immediately sinister - whereas hidden fees always are!

My gripe is really that the Leeds product (with its conditions) was at the top of the Best Buy Tables instead a mortgage product without the conditions, displacing two better products.

It also adds in another variable that hides the true cost of a mortgage from the consumer. I very much doubt it will make it into the APR calculation.

Using True Cost would be a much better way of letting consumers compare mortgages.

Ah, yes - reminds me of the airlines, offering a unrealistic ticket prices that don't take account of all the extra fees.

Hopefully Ryanair won't diversify into financial services any more than they already have.

This really gets my goat I just don't understand why airlines advertise those false prices when everyone knows about the hidden taxes. Wouldn't we all support a company that told us the truth, every time? I can't believe that no-one has made that their marketing strategy

Tell me about it! By the time you get through and have it you are paying more than double the price you thought you would be paying! Its ridiculous!

There should be some changes to make these things more transparent to the average consumer!

Unfortunately the opposite is true, people are fooled time and time again. People seem to want to think they are getting a bargain, the truth doesn't come into it.

I agree with you on this one!

Even I have in the past gone in guns blazing and do not realise what I have just gotten myself into! Its too easy to be fooled without thinking it through properly!